


Guard Your Left

by waterlilyvioletfog



Category: Deadly Class (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Snapshots, they're in loooooove, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 12:35:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17683559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterlilyvioletfog/pseuds/waterlilyvioletfog
Summary: Willie Lewis isn't quite sure what to make of this Arguello kid.





	Guard Your Left

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is my first fic posted to AO3. This is a series of snapshots from Willie's perspective from over the course of the first three episodes. Can be read as platonic or romantic but leans towards romantic. Enjoy, kiddos. Dialogue and characters belong to SyFy.

The punk they’ve been assigned to bring in is crawling backwards, down on the pavement, staring at Kuroki in shock or maybe surprise when Willie pulls the kid back by the collar and yanks the sack over his head. They drag him to someplace and sit his ass down in a metal folding chair. When the sack finally gets pulled off him, Willie can see the kid is dirty but still good-looking. Dark curls, eyes hooded from whatever he’s on. He doesn’t look like a kid so bad he burned down an orphanage, orphans and all. He looks like toasted shit.  
Lin sits down across from the kid, teacup in hand cause he’s fancy. “Tell me,” Lin says calmly, “Are you satisfied with your life?” The kid laughs, and his face burns bright when he does.  
“Me? Yeah! I eat trash and I sleep in piss. Everything according to plan.” The kid’s homeless, lives on the streets. Seems Lin’s planning on making a Rat out of this real-life rat.  
The kid refuses Lin’s offer. Probably doesn’t trust them. He shouldn’t, Willie thinks. Smart kid.  
\---  
Turns out, the kid may not be as smart as he thought. First day of school for this kid and he’s already picked a fight with the cartel. Willie watches the whole thing. Kid’s cleaned up- he’s not so dirty now, and eyes glitter with a manic sort of rage, not drugs. Arguello is short and skinny where Chico is tall and slender. The kid throws the first punch, but Chico beats him down and has him pressed to the wall with a shiv at the ready in about five seconds flat.  
Then Arguello spouts some shit in Chico’s face, not a hint of fear in his eyes. Says he picked a fight with some whack-ass homeless dude just yesterday, which doesn’t sound out of character from what Willie’s seen of him. Arguello’s message is crystal clear- Chico don’t scare him, and he thinks he’s the real bitch here to boot.  
Lin breaks it up, looming from a balcony. Arguello leaves, calling out “FUCK THIS PLACE” as he does.  
\---  
“Fronting all this OG shit, I hate it. This shit ain’t me, man. None of this shit’s me.” Willie watches Arguello try to figure out what the hell he’s talking about, confusion flaming to life on his face.  
“I’m a pacifist, man.” Willie says it like it isn’t the most important thing in the world, like it isn’t something that could get him killed at King’s. Why’s he telling this fool Rat? A heavy silence fills the air, Arguello squinting up at him like what he just said is the most absurd thing the kid’s ever heard in his life.  
“You’re a _what?_ ”  
\---  
The homeless dude’s got him backed into a corner now and then Arguello comes out of fucking nowhere with a pipe or something in hand. Kid whistles like you would to a dog, calling for attention like a master to his hound. Arguello cracks him across the face, leaving him down on the ground. Willie’s rip roaring ready to get the fuck out of there, trying to hold the kid back. But it doesn’t matter.  
Arguello crushes the fool’s head in with that pipe.  
Marcus is shaking a bit when it’s done. He leans down into the dead guy’s pocket, taking out an old photo folded in half, tucking it into his own pocket. Marcus is deadly calm once that photo’s in his pocket. “We killed someone who deserved it,” he says, like it’s the easiest, simplest thing in the world. They wrap the body in a rug, lift it up and toss it into the nearby dumpster. Marcus pulls out a lighter and sets it all on fire, telling Willie he’ll do all of Willie’s AP Black Arts assignments for him. They get into Willie’s car and drive back to King’s without saying a word.  
\---  
The next day in AP BA, Willie stands up in front of the class and recounts a lie about how some homeless biddy told him about this homeless psycho and Willie killed him like Arguello actually did and he tossed the fool’s body in the dumpster all by himself.  
He can see Marcus in his seat, clenching and unclenching his hand.  
As it turns out, Lin doesn’t buy his story. Willie sits with Lin in silence as they listen to Marcus do all the legwork for the dumbasses in their class.  
\---  
Arguello’s a little fucking shit at the party, listening to music on his Walkman like a loser.  
“What’s this whack shit?” Willie asks when he puts on Arguello's headphones.  
“The Smiths.”  
“Sort of gay, isn’t it?” An old dude selling pot cuts in with an affirmation.  
“If by “gay” you mean brave and honest.” He looks up at Willie all defiant as he defends his stupid band. His tone is biting, his words have double meanings to them. Not here, idiot. Not where my crew’s got eyes and ears. Arguello blathers on about fearlessness and sadness.  
“Better to expose your ankles, see which snakes bite.” Willie can read what’s in Marcus’s eyes- just tell the fucking truth you coward. Willie doesn’t. He knows exactly where it’d get him.  
“Well let me save you some time, because here at King’s Dominion? We all bite.” Willie crushes Marcus’s Walkman in his hands, not feeling an inch of the maliciousness he’s displaying. Marcus doesn’t even seem to get mad about that. He’s mad that Willie won’t say anything.  
\---  
“ALL FUCKING DAY I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO YOU BRAG!” Marcus screams it up into Willie’s face, his hands slamming into Willie’s shoulders before he turns around and heads outside into the chill November air.  
“You want to talk about it?” Willie asks him, cautious and gentle. Marcus doesn’t. Marcus spits words at him, grabs Willie’s drink from his hands.  
“You don’t know shit,” Willie tells him.  
“I know you’re living a pose.” That stings. Because he’s right.  
Willie takes a deep breath and explains it all. Marcus softens, dark curls and big glittering eyes and long eyelashes and scars, and all of it on a dark porch where no one can hear their vulnerability.  
“I’ll survive my way, and you survive yours.” Marcus nods.  
\---  
Arguello’s a chatty motherfucker, keeping it real instead of playing the goddamn video game. But he wins it nonetheless and they cheer, just two dumb teenage boys alone in a room together, snacking on whatever. Marcus smiles so much, that smile that burns like the sun. Willie thinks he could get used to this, a friend who actually knows the truth about Willie, who just wants to play video games with him.  
Marcus’s roommate is Shabnam, a fat little rich kid whose house was the locale for last night’s party. Shabnam comes in, naked but for a beige towel around his waist. Willie stands up, half-ass intimidating him for stupid Shabnam’s benefit. “Gimme my money, Arguello,” he says, and Marcus looks so damn confused it almost hurts.  
“I don’t have a dime,” the kid insists, bewildered.  
“I don’t want a dime, I want my two dollars.” Willie leaves the room before Arguello can start to protest more. Dumbass probably still doesn’t realize why he’s doing this.  
\---  
Marcus comes up to him in the hall between classes, reaches up to tap Willie on the shoulder. “Dude, something’s up. I think Jürgen’s gonna--” Willie stops him and knocks the fool’s hand off. Willie’s with his crew, the ones who don’t know like Marcus or about him. Willie speaks low and quiet to him, and he knows there’s none of the anger in his voice that should be there.  
“You heard me, Rat. Get outta my face.” He makes a shooing motion with his hand. Marcus leaves, just a little bit of anger in the set of his shoulders. Willie watches him leave. “Let’s bounce,” he says without taking his eyes off Marcus’s retreating figure.  
Marcus looked so hurt. He’d caught Marcus off guard with his coldness. His expression had changed so fast. Willie wants to break off from his friends, catch up to Marcus and apologize, laugh and toss an arm around Marcus’s shoulders, go back to Marcus’s room and play a video game with him where no one was there to watch and listen and judge.  
But Willie knew what it’d get him and he knew what it’d get Marcus, too.  
\---  
Willie comes into Marcus’s room, slinging his bag off his shoulder, already eager to talk to him. Marcus sits on his bed with his legs propping up the notebook he’s writing something in.  
Marcus looks up at him. “Oh, so now you can talk to me?” Marcus says crossly.  
“What, you still trippin’ over that little two-step in the hall?” There’s nothing Willie could’ve done instead, not in front of his friends. Hell, if any of his friends have big enough brains and sharp enough eyes they probably suspect something’s up between him and Marcus.  
“Look, I- I can’t be friends with someone who’s ashamed of me! Not after what I did for you.”  
“Hey, keep your mouth shut about that, man!” Willie urges him, intensity in his voice. Shabnam isn’t in the room, but it’s not like the walls are so thick that nobody can hear a word Marcus says.  
“Or what?” Marcus says, and his eyes are big, his face open and angry. “You’ll pacifist the shit out of me?” He whisper-shouts the word, thank God.  
Willie gets Marcus’s point.  
\---  
(Willie doesn’t know that it took a couple seconds before Marcus could bring pen back to paper for the final line of his treatise on humanity.)  
\---  
The dance is going fine until Brandy gets up on stage, mike crackling with feedback. She gleefully announces “Miss Rat, 1987” to cheering crowds as they bring out Petra Yolga, the goth chick Rat who’s friends with Marcus, crazy good at poisons, and screwed that Russian prick Viktor the night of the party at Shabnam’s house.  
Usually she’s dressed all in black, lips painted dark. Willie vaguely recalls that tonight her top was made of black fishnet. Now a bleached-blonde wig’s been crammed haphazardly onto her dark hair, her makeup rubbed off and replaced with sparkling blue eyeshadow and pink lip-gloss, her punk ensemble replaced with a yellow, sugary sort of dress that Willie bets a million dollars this girl wouldn’t be caught dead in. Usually the girl looks annoyed or apathetic but now she looks dazed and confused, not sure what’s going on. She came with Viktor tonight. Willie looks over to see the bastard grinning, high-fiving one of his buddies at the humiliation of this Rat girl.  
Petra looks out into the audience and sees it too, tears her arms from the death-grip the cheerleaders have got her in, runs off the stage back to her people.  
Willie shakes his head in disgust at it all. Marcus is gonna flip.  
\---  
The DJ is playing a slow-dance number when the Rats come out of the woodwork dressed in hoods, blowdarts full of Mellow Yellow at their lips. The first dart hits that Viktor prick right between the eyes and he falls back, screaming “The Baba Yaga! She eats my loins!” And then it’s all-out chaos as the legacies race to leave the dance, calling for teachers to protect them from their own sins.  
But Chico’s kneeling next to a friend of his when he catches sight of Marcus beneath one of the hoods and puts two and two together. He knocks Marcus’s weapon from his hands, knocks away the catering tray Marcus grabs to hit him with, knocks Marcus down to the floor. Hard to imagine this is the same kid who bashed that homeless dick’s head in with a pipe not a week earlier. Marcus looks small down on the floor, scared like he wasn’t when Chico had him up against the wall. Chico’s a great big python out of a cartoon above him, ready to strike.  
Willie steps in with a hard push to Chico’s shoulders. “Step off!”  
\---  
Maybe he’ll pay for it tomorrow, but it all feels worth it when they’re back in Marcus’s room playing video games, laughing. “Guard your left! Your left!” Willie admonishes Marcus. Your left is where your heart is, and Marcus never seems to bother defending it, in real life or in a game.  
Marcus asks Willie why he did it, sounding genuinely curious. Willie tells him the truth, that Marcus was just a little bit off the mark when he was on about patriotism.  
“It’s about taking care of your people,” Willie concludes. Marcus is quiet for a second there, eyes aimed at the floor and brows furrowed just a bit while that brilliant brain of his whirs, trying to work out what exactly Willie means.  
“You saying I’m your people?” Marcus asks, his eyes big and hopeful, a sweet little smile dancing at his lips, ready to go supernova at any time. Willie stills. It’s an awful big thing he’s saying, and Marcus can feel it too. Willie turns towards him with an eyebrow raised.  
“Not if you can’t _guard your left_ ,” Willie says, and they’re back to playing the game and laughing. Marcus smile is so bright it lights up the room, burning and burning and beautiful.


End file.
